


That Bar in Tokyo

by StrawberryBubbles



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-07
Updated: 2014-04-07
Packaged: 2018-01-18 12:22:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1428325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StrawberryBubbles/pseuds/StrawberryBubbles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Enjolras meets a mysterious man in a bar in Tokyo (a planet in the future rather than the modern day city) while on the run from the Imperial Guard after a botched robbery.</p>
            </blockquote>





	That Bar in Tokyo

The Galactic Empire is a mess. Enjolras has known this for as long as he can remember and has tried to surround himself with other people who, like him, can look past all the bullshit propaganda claiming they were in the ‘Golden Age’ of humanity and see how terrible things really were. He had done well for himself.

His two best friends who he had known for the majority of his life, Courfeyrac and Combeferre had helped him create and organisation called Les Amis de l’ABC. Les Amis de l’ABC was an organisation made up of other students who ran, somewhat illegal, education and health programmes. When they could they provided food and sometimes even shelter for people who needed it.

What they did had never, strictly speaking, been legal. They all tended to look at it as more of a bending of the law rather than outright breaking it. Because, in the end, who did it really hurt to teach children how to read and to think for themselves, to help heal the sick and injured or to give someone with very little some food and a place to sleep for the night?

Of course the Empire would not see it that way, it wouldn’t help that they often gave the children, and in fact anyone who was interested books that had been banned by the Empire, taught them to think beyond what the Empire had told them. Nor would it help that their two doctors; Joly and Combeferre, were currently in training with the Empire making it illegal to work for anyone but the Empire. And seeing as quite a few of the people they gave food and shelter too tended to be fugitives of the Empire, the Empire probably wouldn’t be too forgiving of that either.

However despite all of this, they had never really done anything _too_ illegal. They still went to school as was required by law for people who could afford it, they never stole anything, granted they occasionally bought stuff from the black market that was probably stolen, but they never actually stole anything themselves. They still behaved in most regards as the Empire would want them to behave, but all of them were starting to wonder how much longer they could last behaving as the Empire required them to.

“We can’t do it Enjolras.” Combeferre said, he was using his most reasonable tone which alerted Enjolras to the fact that he clearly thought Enjolras was about to be very unreasonable. And well, it would be such a shame to disappoint him.

“Yes we can, we just need to think of a way, we can work this out.” He replied. But they couldn’t. He knew they couldn’t. They couldn’t four hours ago when they started trying to find a way and they couldn’t now. Nor would they be able to find a way any time soon.

He missed the look Combeferre shared with Courfeyrac, the one that said they were going to have to work together to get Enjolras to see sense. It was a routine they had perfected years ago and fondly dubbed ‘Get the Stubborn Idiot to Admit he is Wrong Before he Gets Himself Either Killed or Arrested’.

“Enjorlas, you have to think about this,” Courfeyrac started.

“We need to be sensible.” Combeferre continued. “If we put too much in to one cause we won’t be able to help anyone else.”

“We know this means a lot to you, it means a lot to us too.” And Courfeyrac really meant it, it broke his heart to admit they were out of options, but they were.

“But we need to cut our losses here, we can’t make this situation any better, we can only really make it worse at this point, there is nothing we can do.” Combeferre went on putting a comforting hand near to Enjolras’ arm, he didn’t like to be touched that much, but he liked to have his friends close, liked to know they were there.

Enjolras was about to protest, about to put up a fight and argue, but he was so tired working against the Empire and yet with it at the same time. Tired of trying to best them, but playing into their hands at the same time, they could do everything they can, put all of their money together and probably still end up helping the Empire more than hurting it.

So instead of arguing he sighed, he knew they were right, he also knew this routine well enough that he was fairly certain he could act it out in his sleep, he knew they could, Courf had sleep talked his entire side of the speech once, much to the amusement of all those present. But right now Enjolras was not amused, he was tired and angry, and if he was honest with himself, upset. So he told them.

“You’re right. I’m going to bed. Goodnight.” He didn’t look at either of them, he simply walked off in the direction of his room.

He missed Courfeyrac’s quickly aborted start of his next part of the speech. Missed the worried look he then shared with Combeferre. Missed the way both of their hands dropped below the table to allow both of them to grasp the others hand so that each could give the other some level of support and comfort.

What they had tried, and failed, to find was a way to pay the bail of a man they bought the majority of their medical supplies from. He had been caught that evening at 11:30, by 12 Combeferre, Courfeyrac and Enjolras had been looking through the expenses and income of Les Amis de l’ABC, to try and find some way, anyway, to pay his bail. The justice system of the Galactic Empire was a corrupt one where bail was more a guarantee of a trial more than anything else. Without it, by the end of the week he would be working in either the factories or the mines for the Empire, both dangerous jobs the workers of which were only expected to survive at most for five years. With bail, he would actually get a trial, with bail plus a bribe he would be free to go, in the end the Empire really only cared about money and the expansion of the Empire, two things that were intertwined.

Les Amis couldn’t even scrape together enough for his bail let alone the bribe to go with it, and without the bribe it would almost be certain that he would end up in the mines or factories anyway.

But it wasn’t just the money. Even paying the bail and bribe would not work out well for them in the end. As soon as they paid his bail the Empire would know they had helped a criminal, and from that point on Les Amis de l’ABC would be considered a criminal organisation and monitored as one. They wouldn’t be able to help anyone else without having to pay sever fines, and possibly even being arrested themselves.

To pay their suppliers bail would be to become real criminals, which would be fitting considering it would take a criminal act to get enough money to pay his bail.

Enjolras stopped with his foot half raised above the next step in front of him that would lead him up to the third floor of the house Les Amis de l’ABC lived in.

Why not become criminals? They had all talked about it. About how the only way to really make any kind of difference in this galaxy was to break the laws set down by those that made life so difficult for so many. Of course a lot of the talk had been in jest, but some of it wasn’t. All of them knew the best way to make the biggest difference was to become criminals, they all knew that was where they were heading, where they were going to end up. They had all thought they would make it to the end of their education first, but why not take those final few steps now? They had a reason, they had motivation and the majority of them only had a few more weeks left of university anyway. It was the perfect time, the perfect cause. None of Les Amis would object to them finally turning to crime to help the man who had allowed them to help so many others over the last few years.

He ran back to the kitchen where he, Combeferre and Courfeyrac had been trying to find a solution and pretended to ignore the way he found them with their foreheads pressed together looking into each other’s eyes in silence. He figured his best friends would tell him when they were ready, and if they weren’t ready yet, he wouldn’t make them tell him.

Still breathless, partially from running, partially from the adrenaline running through his system he told them; “I have an idea.”

 

 

_ - _ - _

 

 

They decided to rob governor Hearon, the governor of Tokyo, the world over from theirs. He was known to have a mistrust of banks along with a large amount of money that he kept in his house, if you could call the mansion that served him as a residence a house. They decided he was the best target because as he was not of their world there would not be too much suspicion that anyone from their world would be the thief and they would almost certainly look locally first. As well as that because he kept his money in his house and not his bank this meant there was no electronic monitoring of how much money he had, it might take him several weeks to even notice the money was missing, and by that time the supplier to Les Amis would be free to continue supplying them, with rather more care to secrecy this time. Jehan, a member of Les Amis, was still in contact with his wealthy parents who had agreed to lend him their private ship, without knowing what it was for, which meant they could get in and out of the planet without the authorities ever knowing they were there.

They spent the next few days planning out every single detail, all of them forgoing as much sleep as they could while still being useful.

In the ship for the journey over to the other planet they went over the plan over and over again in meticulous detail making sure every member of Les Amis knew exactly where they were supposed to be and when.

Enjolras was confident. Everything was going to go well, they would get their money, free their supplier and continue helping people. He knew it would have to be different. They would be considered, at the very least, the associates of a criminal. They would have to be more careful, help in different ways, do less in terms of hands on education, any of the students associated with them would immediately get a mark against them in the Empires eyes.

But at the same time they would be free to do so much more. Without the restraints of at least seeming to be law abiding citizens they could do so many things they had always wanted to do, really start making a difference in the fight against the Empire, the fight for freedom for all. Everything was going to go so well.

Everything went wrong.

Nothing and nobody was where they were supposed to be. The alarms were so much more complex than Bossuet, their resident technician, had any experience with. The plan to distract had gone abysmally, Courf and Joly hadn’t even managed one minute let alone the 20 or so Les Amis needed to finish the job. Bahorel, Jehan and Enjolras had been hopelessly out numbered on the muscle front and Combeferre hadn’t even managed to get in to do his part in the plan.

Enjolras was now running for his life hoping the others made it to the meeting place and could get off planet. He had, unfortunately gotten, completely turned around in the mess of the Imperial Guard arriving and had run in entirely the wrong direction. He was now completely lost with the Imperial Guard hot on his heels, with no real hope of getting out of this unscathed.

He was running down a dark street of high fences, locked gates and locked doors. There seemed to be no side streets and the farther down the street he got the more certain he became that he was headed down a dead end. His only hope was the one glimpse of light he had gotten as someone had exited a building, caught sight of Enjolras and the Imperial guard heading his way and run a short way up the street opened a gate and then from the resounding metal ‘clunk’ heard down the street, locked it, without having locked the door he had exited from.

Enjolras was just drawing even with the door, nearly out of breath, muscles feeling like they were about to give way and hoping against hope that this door, this one sliver of light and hope would lead to his salvation.

He burst through the door panting and gasping for breath to be confronted with a rather empty bar. The light was soft and hazy, and the tables devoid of all people. He looked around hoping for a back door or a stair case, anything, and his eyes alighted on the only door he could see, placed behind the bar and a very surprised looking barmaid who stood gaping at him paused mid-way through the cleaning of a glass. To her left was the sole other occupant of the bar, a rather short but broad man with wildly curly hair who was slumped over what looked like a glass of whiskey.

Enjolras made it about ten steps into the bar towards that one door when the front door opened again with a crash that startled the bar-maid into dropping the glass she had been cleaning, it seemed to be the smash of the glass rather than the crash of the door that woke the drunk. He sat up and looked blurrily around as the Guard trained their weapons on Enjolras.

“You are under arrest” the leader, or at least who Enjolras assumed to be the leader, stated, rather obviously in Enjolras’ opinion.

Enjolras, frantically tried to think of something witty to say, something to stall them, to give him any kind of semblance of time to think of something to do, he needn’t have however, as not ten seconds later he was saved the trouble.

“Ahh Apollo,” came a voice from behind him. “To what do we mortals owe this honour?” He turned around to see the drunk smiling wickedly at him, arms open and standing rather steadily on his feet, impressively so considering what his position had been not even five minutes ago.

“This is no concern of yours. Go back to your drink, before we arrest you also.” The leader said eyes only flicking away from Enjolras for a second.

The man laughed. “Doesn’t concern me? I am an artist my friend, my only concerns are that of golden gods to paint and alcohol to numb the disappointment and self-hatred when I fail to capture them properly. And this here is Apollo” He said sparing a glare for the guard. “The golden god of music and light, I will do anything in my power to capture his likeness” he continued, turning back to Enjolras, a dashing smile back on his face “so I ask you again Apollo, what brings you here? And is there anything I can do to assist you?” He ended with a slight incline of his head, as though bowing to Enjolras.

Enjolras, in turn, was entirely unsure how to react. He felt like he should object to being compared to a god, especially seeing as the Empire he was fighting against had such an obsession with claiming to be born of the gods as though they were part of the ancient Roman Empire instead of the Modern Galactic one, but Enjolras for some, unfathomable reason, didn’t overly mind the comparison.

“Uh. . .” was all Enjolras managed before the leader of the Guard interrupted him.

“That’s it, you are under arrest too.” He said and half the Guard trained their weapons on him instead of Enjolras.

“I’m sorry, I can’t be under arrest right now, you see, I am currently trying to flirt with a golden god who stumbled into the midst of what is currently my favourite bar.” Once again a dashing smile was awarded to Enjolras.

Enjolras laughed. This man was impossible. But Enjolras couldn’t think of anything. This man had awarded him with plenty more time to think of a plan, some kind of escape, and instead he had taken the time to notice that the man would be conventionally good looking if it wasn’t for his large and fairly crooked nose. Enjolras noticed his sparkling hazel eyes, his dashing smile, and his muscular frame and completely failed to notice any means of escape. So he decided to play along.

“Well, I could do with a rescue.” He said laughing again, if he was going to go down, may as well go down looking like an idiot.

He was still smiling at the man, looking right into his eyes and didn’t see him stealthily pull a small silver device from his pocket.

“Done.” The man said. The last thing Enjolras saw was his smile directed at him once again, and then there was a flash of bright white light and the world went dark.

 

_ - _ - _

 

When he came to the first thing he noticed was that he was sitting in an incredibly comfortable seat that seemed to be vibrating. The first thing he saw was the man from the bar sitting in a seat beside him seemingly driving a space ship, but he was fairly sure that couldn’t be true. Surely they had been arrested when he black out, and even if they hadn’t surely he should not be driving a space ship.

The man noticed him, he smiled again; he seemed to do that a lot.

“I know, I know,” he said, “not the best move kidnapping the person you’re trying to impress, but I figure the whole ‘rescuing you from the Imperial Guard’ thing trumps the whole ‘kidnapping’ thing.”

Enjolras groaned and tried to sit up. The world spun and he decided that was an endeavour for later. Until he remembered his friends. He bolted up right and steadfastly ignored the world refusing to settle into place around him.

“My friends.” He managed to get out before his body, unimpressed with the spinning quality of the world, gave up on consciousness and he blacked out again.

The second time he came to, he was lying in the dark on a bed, that was still, rather suspiciously in his opinion, vibrating.

When he sat up this time the world spun about him for only a few seconds before it settled down to what he was used to. He then gingerly got up and walked towards the door. Half-formed thoughts of the door being locked were squashed when it slid open of its own accord as he got nearer.

Once the door was open he could hear music and loud, rather good singing. He walked down the gleaming interior of what had to be a top of the line brand new space ship towards the singing. His plan had been to sneak up and look through the window conveniently placed in the door to see if he was still with the smiling man. Unfortunately, this door, like the one in the room he was sleeping, opened of its own accord when he got too close.

The smiling man looked up from the console he was inspecting. With a flick of his fingers the music turned off.

“Ah, Apollo, I see Hypnos has released you from his cave.” Enjolras didn’t know who Hypnos was, nor why the smiling man thought he had been in a cave when surely he knew he had been in a room just down the hall from here. But neither that, nor the continuation of the nickname Apollo were at the fore-front of his mind.

“My friends, I have to find out if they are all right.” He said.

“Ah, yes.” The smiling man smiled. Again. “They are fine Apollo, you were kind of half-asleep, half-awake for a while and you told me how to contact them. They are all fine, you were the only one who didn’t make it back to the ship, though unfortunately they did not get any money, I have been instructed to deliver you to this address.” He handed Enjolras a piece of paper that had the address of Les Amis house written on it in flowing writing. “The other unfortunate thing is it is going to take some time to get you there. There was a break in at the governor’s house and so we have to be careful about when we leave.”

Enjolras nodded along to what he was saying still semi recovering, struggling to keep up and wondered if he should tell this man that he was part of that break in or if that would cause him to leave him behind.

“Great, that’s, that’s great.” He mumbled. “Hey, what did you do? I was done for and then you were smiling then poof everything was white then dark and then I was here and not ever in a cave.” He knew he wasn’t overly making sense but he currently felt like his brain had just been dipped in a honey and all his thoughts were sticky and slow to come.

He seemed to understand however cause he laughed and proceeded to explain. “It was this.” He said pulling out a small silver thing out of a pocket and throwing it up in the air once before handing it to Enjolras. “It’s something my friend came up with, makes everyone but the guy holding it black out. It’s pretty impressive.” Enjolras inspected it as he talked. It was small, about the size of his thumb, mostly smooth with a silver button on the end. “Only works once though.” He continued on. Suddenly sounding glum, not at all the cheerful man Enjolras had gotten used to over this short period of time. Enjolras looked up and confirmed, yes, he looked glum also.

“I’m sorry you wasted it on me.” He said, slowly starting to come back to himself.

“Not at all.” The man replied, smile back, bright and cheerful. “It was sort of an experiment anyway."

“An Experiment?” Enjolras asked narrowing his eyes. “What do you mean an experiment?”

“Going by the facial expression you know exactly what I mean, it had never really been used before and I was trying it out, seeing what would happen.” As he talked he pulled out a box of cigarettes and a silver lighter with a rather grand ‘R’ engraved upon it in curling scripture, he offered a cigarette to Enjolras, Enjolras declined.

“You mean to say, you risked yourself on a person you’d never meet and a piece of technology you had never used before?” The man nodded as he blew out the smoke of his recently light cigarette. “Why?” Enjolras asked.

“Because, it wasn’t fair, you were out numbered six to one and it was the Imperial Guard. People they think have done something wrong generally deserve medals.”

Enjolras smiled. This was exactly the type of man they wanted in Les Amis de l’ABC. Someone unafraid to put the lives of others before their own and someone who understood rather explicitly exactly how corrupt the Galactic Empire is.

“My friends and I have a group you know.” Enjolras said. “Les Amis de l’ABC” the man laughed, Enjolras hoped that was because he got the pun. “We work with the disadvantaged-“

“-You mean abased” Enjolras smiled, yeah, he definitely got the pun.

“-In our city.” Enjolras continued. “Helping people get an education and health care, you’d be more than welcome to join us.” Enjolras was only partially into his recruitment speech, he was about to go into all the different things they did in great detail but the man laughed.

“No I’m sorry, I don’t help others, I don’t do good and I don’t volunteer. Especially not with a bunch of people who can’t even rob the governor of Tokyo without cocking it up.” He raised his eye brows and coked his head in a way that said to Enjolras ‘come on, really?’

Enjolras didn’t know how to reply, or what to address first.

“What do you mean you don’t do good? You put your life on the line for a stranger!” He asked incredulously, probably not the best question to ask first, but it was the one Enjolras was most concerned about.

“What life?” the man asked with a laugh. “And I hardly put anything on the line, I trust Feuilly, the guy who made this, with my life. He said it would knock everybody unconscious and it did. Nothing was on the line, nothing about it was altruistic.”

“Oh really.” Enjolras said incredulously. “And it’s not going out of your way at all to take me off planet?”

“I owe a friend a ship, I’m gonna leave this behind when I drop you off and then I’ll be square with her. More than square, this thing is worth way more than the bucket of hers I crashed.”

“Fine.” Enjolras said, clearly still entirely unconvinced. “Because of course something isn’t ‘good’ unless it is entirely altruistic. Never mind that there is a legitimate argument that no act is truly altruistic. Never mind that you have still helped me immensely to your own detriment and risk. You ‘don’t do good’.”

The man raised his eye brows again, clearly amused.

“Yup. That about sums it up.”

Enjolras huffed.

“Fine.” He said again, no more convinced than last time but unwilling to continue pushing his luck. “How did you know we tried to rob the governor?” He asked instead of continuing on in their argument.

“Well, you came running into a bar reasonably close to the governor’s house being chased by the Imperial Guard, then there was a report over the wireless saying someone had attempted to break into the governor’s house and your friends message to you said they didn’t get any money. It really wasn’t that hard to figure out.”

“Oh.” Said Enjolras.

“How did you guys even manage to fuck that up so badly anyway? Governor Hearon is quite possibly the easiest person to steal from, I have been living off him for the past 6 months.”

Enjolras felt this should probably not make him like the man more, but it did, it also made Enjolras want him to join Les Amis even more, clearly this man had some experience he could help.

“It was the first time we ever tried anything like that.” He finally ended up admitting after weighing up his options for some time. “Nothing worked the way we thought it would.” He added in a voice far too quiet and small sounding for his liking.

He looked up into the eyes of the man, who he still didn’t even know the name of, and saw nothing but empathy and kindness there.

Enjolras didn’t know why, but that one look of kindness and understanding led to him spilling his guts for this absolute stranger. He told him how Les Amis started, what they did, why they were trying to steal the money, how they tried to steal it. Everything. And it was so easy, once he started it was so easy to just tell him everything. He nodded and hummed and agreed with Enjolras in all the right places. Argued with him on some points, which both annoyed and amused Enjolras, but mostly he just listened.

He finally ended by telling him how everything had gone so incredibly wrong.

The man rested his hand on Enjolras’ knee, and for some reason that Enjolras didn’t want to think about, he didn’t mind it. In fact it made him feel something that he didn’t want to examine to closely for fear of what he would find there.

“Nothing works out the way you think it will when you first try it.” The man was saying. “But that’s okay, you will learn from your mistakes and you will get better. And look, I have a couple of friends on your planet. I could give you a way to contact them, they can help yeah? You guys can do your whole saving the galaxy thing, just with a little bit more finesse.” He smiled again, a wicked smile that promised all sorts of mischief.

“That’d be great.” Enjolras said. “It would be even better if you came.” Enjolras didn’t know why he felt so shy, why he was nervous about looking this man in the eyes, causing him to look up from under his eye lashes rather than meeting his gaze dead on.

The man laughed. “I know you think that, but I can promise you it wouldn’t. Look.“ He said clapping his hand down on Enjolras’ leg and standing up, “we can probably go now, so how about you go back to bed, I’ll write down a couple of names and  when you wake up, you will be home and you can work on putting this whole mess behind you.” He gestured to the door.

Enjolras stood up walking towards it. He paused in the door way when he heard the man softly say “Goodnight Apollo.”

“My names not Apollo, you know.” Enjolras said.

“I know.” The man laughed.

“It’s-

“-Don’t” he said.

“Why?” Enjolras asked, inexplicably feeling hurt.

“You’re a boy with golden curls who I meet trying to get away from the Imperial Guard, you’re not going to make it to thirty Apollo. Whatever your name is, eventually it won’t matter. It doesn’t matter how much you learn, or how clever you are. Eventually you, and your whole group, will be lying in unmarked graves. A group of school boys who will have barely missed out on becoming historic. I’d rather you stay Apollo, the golden god, immortal and bright as the sun, than the human boy, mortal and with the light of a comet; shining bright but only for a moment before darkness consumes you.”

Enjolras had no reply to that. He swallowed a lump that had formed in his throat, trying to ignore the reason for it and he walked back out the door down the corridor to the room he had woken up in.

 

_ - _ - _

 

When Enjolras woke up this time there was no suspicious vibration or singing, only stillness and silence. He wandered down to the cock-pit. Instead of finding the man he found a note in the same flowing script the address of Les Amis house had been written in:

_Apollo_

_It was a pleasure meeting you, I only wish you could say the same._

_Keep the ship, take it to Ép, tell her half of it is payment from R for the ship I crashed, the other half is as payment for her to help you learn the tricks of the trade._

_Also look Feuilly up, the guy whose device knocked you out, he’s always keen for a challenge and super in to all that equality crap you and I both know you are a fervent believer in._

_I want to tell you to look after yourself but we both know that won’t happen._

_Good luck Apollo,_

_Regards,_

_R_

It was followed by two addresses one for ‘Ép’ and one for ‘Feuilly’.

Enjolras wasn’t overly surprised that the man, R, hadn’t stayed, he didn’t seem the type. He was however surprised both by the small pang of regret he felt that he had never actually asked his name himself, and by the way he felt the urge to trace the elaborate R the man used as his signature. And if he gave into this urge, well, no one had to know.


End file.
